Find your theme… but don’t worry if you have no clue what are you are trying to say (yet)

Theme is something many writers struggle with, but the truth is it rarely emerges at the beginning of the beginning of the script development process, more often than not it’s something that is REVEALED to the writer after a few drafts. At least that’s my experience with my own writing but also what I’ve observed with the many writers and screenwriting students I’ve worked with thus far.

To find a theme there are plenty of theoretical tools out there from Lajos Egri’s “The Art of Dramatic Writing” to Darak Mark’s “Inside Story” but I like the way Carson Reeves from Scriptshadow put it simply, in layman’s terms, in the article below: “WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?”. That’s all a theme boils down to. Oftentimes finding your theme is an unconscious journey, a deep truth we unearth from the depth of your psyche through a trial-an-error process.